


Water's Wet

by jouissant



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Bathing/Washing, M/M, Showers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 03:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9417038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jouissant/pseuds/jouissant
Summary: It’s by design that they take the last showers in Haguenau.





	

It’s by design that they take the last showers in Haguenau, Lew thinks. Sure, he knows it’s mostly about the men, about the fact Dick wants to make certain they all get their fair share of hot water first, despite the fact the two of them are just as unwashed and that it probably bothers Dick twice as much as it does anyone else. But as they shuffle into the makeshift tent late in the day Lew can’t help but think it might be a little bit about this. Because it’s just the two of them, and it feels as if it hasn’t been just the two of them in any sort of hospitable way for a very long time. 

Lew doesn’t look at Dick as they strip, although he can see him out of the corner of his eye as he makes quick work of his ODs and tosses them to one side. He doesn’t look at him as they make their way along the row of shower heads. It would be prudent, Lew thinks, not to stand beside each other. But they do anyway, and when the water comes on and it’s streaming over Lew’s face at last he likes to think it lends a measure of plausible deniability. He might not be looking at Dick. After all, he’s got water in his eyes. 

There’s a slimy cake of soap on the ground and he stoops quickly to pick it up and runs it under the water to get the grit off. He rubs it around the crown of his head, down over his chest and under his arms. Across his belly and between his legs. The temperature of the water feels luxurious; as it runs over him his skin prickles, itchy with dirt, and he scrubs at his skin, frustrated by his need to be businesslike about this, the siren blare in the back of his mind that tells him not to relax, that the variety of shit that could happen to interrupt this idyll ranges from the water cutting out to mortar fire. On balance, he thinks he might rather take a direct hit. Less uncomfortable. As he rinses the soapsuds off he tilts his head back. Across from him Dick cuts a pale figure in the dim tent. Lew lets his eyes dart down along the lines of his body, just quickly, just for a second. He’s looking around for soap himself, Lew notices. There’s a pile of it back at the front of the tent, where their clothes are, but he’d have to walk back the length of it soaking wet and naked to get there, and while Lew might have a prurient interest in that particular view he also thinks that if Dick’s never cold again on his watch it’ll be too damn soon. 

Hey, is all he has to say. Get Dick’s attention and pass him the soap. Turn his back and let him alone. Instead, he watches. Dick’s head is bowed, hair plastered to his skull. It’s been dark with grease for weeks, that hair, and in the mornings he watches Dick comb it into place and frown minutely and scrounge around in vain for shaving soap and thinks, war is hell all right. 

Lew flexes his fingers around the soap, and his heart beats faster just to think of doing what he wants to do. But they’re alone, he thinks. And it’s not as if—  
He reaches out and touches Dick’s arm. He looks up, water beading on his brows and eyelashes. He gives Lew an odd look, but when Lew pulls him over into his own shower stream he comes as willingly as if he’d considered this himself. Lew steps backwards to situate Dick under the water; his own back immediately chills in the air, but Lew ignores it.

“Nix,” Dick says, with a note of warning. By now Lew knows this voice; it’s the one Dick uses when they’re doing something risky, as if he thinks Lew’s forgotten the stakes, as if he ever could. Lew always knows. It’s just that it’s always worth it. 

“Just a second,” Lew says. “Just let me–” 

He reaches up and runs the soap over Dick’s head. Around and around, until he’s built up a surfeit of creamy foam. It’s shitty soap, but Lew manages a decent lather. He sets his hand on the top of Dick’s head and rubs, working the soap in. 

He rakes Dick’s hair forward and back, eliminating the part he swears Dick makes with a ruler. He sets his palm against the back of Dick’s skull, digs his fingertips in along the back of his neck over the knobs of his vertebrae, the places Dick touches semiconsciously when he has a headache. He walks his fingers into the creases behind Dick's ears, folding the springy cartilage forward, and Lew thinks he's never really had occasion to appreciate the shell-pink skin there but now's as good a time as any. He wipes runoff from Dick's forehead like he's taking his temperature, and feels the ridges of Dick's orbits, his eyes deep-set with lack of sleep and worry. 

Dick lets his head fall forward, chin to chest. His eyes close against the flow of water. His face is clean now, and younger looking than Lew remembers. He’s smiling, and that's good. With his eyes closed like that he looks as if he could be somewhere else, or like he could be successfully pretending to be. Which is more than Lew can say for his own shower, but fifty percent's not bad, and hell, it's even the better half. Lew's had a lucky war, all things considered, and in this his luck seems to be holding. He runs the soap along Dick's collarbones and follows it with his hand. The soap turns greyish as he rubs, and makes Lew think he should give himself another good going over after he's finished with Dick. 

He skates over Dick's stomach, his ribs. Dick's still plenty fit, Lew thinks, but there's a spareness too him now Lew doesn't like, the sense that he's walking a line just this side of gaunt. They all lost weight in the Ardennes, their bodies working doubletime just to keep from freezing. Lew remembers tucking in with Dick and shivering all night, clutching one another as though afraid they might both shake free of gravity's pull entirely. When they did sleep they woke up sore, fatigued as if they'd marched through until dawn. Now Lew strums his fingertips down Dick's sides, on either side of his hips and further down. He turns the bar of soap lengthwise and lathers a wide strip below Dick's navel. Hot, soapy water runs down into the red hair between Dick's thighs, and Lew takes a deep breath before reaching down to cup Dick carefully in one hand. 

Dick looks up sharply. Any second he'll tell Lew to stop, and rightly so; if someone comes in what he's doing now can't be mistaken for anything but what it is. They're too close for that, and Lew's hands on Dick are far too practiced, too tender. He's too keyed up and chilly to really want Dick this way, so he leaves him be. If he had more time, if they were in a real shower in a real bathroom, he'd kneel on the tile and bathe Dick's feet just for absurd love of doing it, and probably suck him off besides.

But it's late winter in the ETO, he can hear voices in the middle distance, and he thinks he just heard the crump of a mortar sailing home across the river. In any case, the hot water can't last forever, and if Dick has to rinse clean of Lew's ministrations with cold Lew will never forgive himself. So he stays on his feet, and steps closer just for a moment, presses himself against Dick to feel his skin slide clean and slick and warm against Dick's, the drag of their hair where it catches and tugs just enough to be uncomfortable. After months of blunt force contact Lew craves the small subtleties of touch, narrow as a fingernail, fine as an eyelash. Warm and wet as a lick. He puts his hands on Dick's waist, and Dick's spine straightens like a bargepole. 

"Lew," Dick mutters, and there's that tone again. 

Dick is a risk-taker, Lew's learned. Only he likes to be transparent—hence his warnings—and he weighs potential benefits out ounce by ounce. Lew thinks that under the circumstances the scales will tip in his favor. He leans up and kisses Dick, and when Dick's mouth opens it isn't to tell Lew no but to welcome him in. Just quickly, just for a moment. Just because they're alone.

The shower roars down around their ears. If Lew opened his eyes, he wouldn't see a thing, and Dick's mouth tastes like clean water, like tooth powder, like nothing at all.


End file.
